The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War - Tapa dura

"This deftly written, almost unbearably moving book serves us to remind us powerfully of the horrors faced by the wounded on the Civil War battlefields, of the genius and compassion of Walt Whitman in dealing with them, and of the remarkable skill of one of America's most accomplished biographers in researching and telling so poignant a story."--Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and The Madman "The Better Angel illuminates Walt Whitman's Civil War years with frankness and compassion. Its insights and compelling narrative afford us new and humanly rich understandings of the poet and his vision of America."-- Robert H. Abzug, author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination and Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps "Roy Morris, Jr.'s elegant and moving book shows how the great civil war that redeemed the nation's soul also reawakened the soul of the nation's greatest poet, Walt Whitman. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about American culture."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, author of Chants Democratic and The Kingdom of Matthias "This deftly written, almost unbearably moving book serves us to remind us powerfully of the horrors faced by the wounded on the Civil War battlefields, of the genius and compassion of Walt Whitman in dealing with them, and of the remarkable skill of one of America's most accomplished biographers in researching and telling so poignant a story."--Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and The Madman "The Better Angel illuminates Walt Whitman's Civil War years with frankness and compassion. Its insights and compelling narrative afford us new and humanly rich understandings of the poet and his vision of America."-- Robert H. Abzug, author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination and Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps "Roy Morris, Jr.'s elegant and moving book shows how the great civil war that redeemed the nation's soul also reawakened the soul of the nation's greatest poet, Walt Whitman. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about American culture."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, author of Chants Democratic and The Kingdom of Matthias "This deftly written, almost unbearably moving book serves us to remind us powerfully of the horrors faced by the wounded on the Civil War battlefields, of the genius and compassion of Walt Whitman in dealing with them, and of the remarkable skill of one of America's most accomplished biographers in researching and telling so poignant a story."--Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and The Madman "The Better Angel illuminates Walt Whitman's Civil War years with frankness and compassion. Its insights and compelling narrative afford us new and humanly rich understandings of the poet and his vision of America."-- Robert H. Abzug, author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination and Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps "Roy Morris, Jr.'s elegant and moving book shows how the great civil war that redeemed the nation's soul also reawakened the soul of the nation's greatest poet, Walt Whitman. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about American culture."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, author of Chants Democratic and The Kingdom of Matthias "This deftly written, almost unbearably moving book serves us to remind us powerfully of the horrors faced by the wounded on the Civil War battlefields, of the genius and compassion of Walt Whitman in dealing with them, and of the remarkable skill of one of America's most accomplished biographers in researching and telling so poignant a story."--Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and The Madman "The Better Angel illuminates Walt Whitman's Civil War years with frankness and compassion. Its insights and compelling narrative afford us new and humanly rich understandings of the poet and his vision of America."-- Robert H. Abzug, author of Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination and Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps "Roy Morris, Jr.'s elegant and moving book shows how the great civil war that redeemed the nation's soul also reawakened the soul of the nation's greatest poet, Walt Whitman. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about American culture."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, author of Chants Democratic and The Kingdom of Matthias

On May 26, 1863, Walt Whitman wrote to his mother: "O the sad, sad things I see - the noble young men with legs and arms taken off - the deaths - the sick weakness, sicker than death, that some endure, after amputations...just flickering alive, and O so deathly weak and sick." For nearly three years, Whitman immersed himself in the devastation of the Civil War, tending to thousands of wounded soldiers and recording his experience with immediacy and compassion. In this book, biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us an account of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War Years and an historically important examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded. Whitman was mired in depression as the war began, subsisting on journalistic hackwork, wasting his nights in New York's seedy bohemian underground, his "great career" as a poet apparently stalled. But when news came that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman rushed south to find him. Though his brother's injury was slight, Whitman was deeply affected by his first view of the war's casualties.